This invention relates to medications carts, cabinets, and items providing storage and access to patient pharmaceuticals and other items to be administered in a hospital, transitional care facility, clinic, or other health care facility where administration of the materials must be managed and controlled. The invention also concerns related carts and cabinets from which controlled or potentially dangerous materials, e.g., anesthetics, are to be dispensed and/or administered.
Currently, to gain access to one of these carts or cabinets, an authorized user has to enter a user ID, which can be a machine readable code on a badge or card, or may be a code that the user enters at a keyboard. To gain access to more secure compartments in the cart or cabinet, e.g., narcotics or anesthetic storage, the user has to also enter a narcotics access code. Access can take some time to accomplish, as it first involves activating a touch screen and then pushing the digits for each access code, followed by pushing the “enter” key and then selecting which drawer or compartment, and then waiting for a motor to turn to open the compartment door or unlock a drawer. This procedure can consume considerable time over the course of a day.
One improvement to this method of gaining authorized access would be the use of facial recognition (FR), initiated by speaking an “activation word” which is recognized by the electronics on the cart or cabinet to start the FR access procedure. For example, the user may speak “Door One” or “Door Two”, or press a specific key or button to access Door One or Door Two of the cabinet or cart. In this FR process, an onboard camera takes a picture of the user attempting access, and the picture is compared with the image data in a digital stored library of photographs of authorized users. The picture taken by the onboard camera is compared with these stored pictures using e.g. a vectorization process, and if there is a match, the specific door or drawer or compartment is unlocked or opened. All data, including the image data, can be stored to create an audit trail of all access attempts, successful or not. Typically, what is stored is the vectorized image data, although optionally the actual image can be stored, at least for the users who are denied access. An optional light or flash can be employed in low light environments to ensure the FR photograph is of sufficient quality.
The above technique has been tested, and can work well with good sensitivity and specificity. However, the facial recognition system and be tricked or “fooled” by using a good photograph of an authorized user and presenting that to the camera used for facial recognition. A portrait photo taken on a smart cellular phone, i.e., a “selfie”, can also fool the FR system.
One possible solution to this flaw in the FR system could be to combine a current sign-in procedure, such as a code entry, with facial recognition, which has the advantage that simply having a photograph of an authorized user, or having only the authorized user's ID code, would not be sufficient, as one would need both to access the cabinet. Retinal or thumbprint authentication could also be combined with facial recognition, but this would also add time to the procedure. These are better solutions than FR alone, but can still be tricked and also the existing sign-in and code entry procedures slow the validation process down, as discussed earlier.